Re: TP Msg. #422 WHEN STUDENTS THINK WE ARE MEAN (fwd)

[John Clement <clement@HAL-PC.ORG>]

> On Wed, 19 Jun 2002, Herbert H Gottlieb wrote:
>
> > On Tue, 18 Jun 2002 13:20:03 -0700 "Daniel L. MacIsaac"
> > <Dan.MacIsaac@NAU.EDU> writes:
> > > ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> > > "I believe it doesn't matter how well you know the field, how well
> > > you prepare the curriculum, how well you deliver lectures, how well
> > > your labs integrate into the course, how well you write tests,
> > > etc...
> > > none of this matters if the students think you are uncaring and
> > > mean."........ OR THEY DO NOT WANT TO LEARN
>
>         to which I would add: OR THEY BELIEVE THEY CAN LEARN WITH MINIMAL
> EFFORT.
>
>       this is not to belittle Mike's original remarks; I just expect the
> student to meet me half way, otherwise it's becomes more difficult for me
> to "care".
>
>                Mike Monce
>                Connecticut College

To which I would add: or they believe they can get the desired grade with
minimal effort.

We live in a society that devalues education and learning, and that has
always been this way.  The Ivy League gentleman's C has been around ever
since the league was formed.  Popular politicians have never been called to
task when they insult people by calling them eggheads (really it should be a
compliment).  Europeans tend to value education, or perhaps the titles of
education more.  For example the wife of a PhD (Dr. Schmidt) in Germany is
Frau Dr. Schmidt.  Of course this attitude is schizophrenic or even
hypocritical as we expect MDs to be superb technicians and completely up to
date in medical knowledge.

By making a college degree a bankable and necessary commodity we have made
the job of education essentially a set of barriers that students must
overcome to get their "union cards" for the lucrative profession they have
chosen.  Is this a good thing?  I really don't know, as now we have more
students staying in school longer than ever before.  Unfortunately education
research (and of course PER) has shown that despite the extra schooling they
are coming out with very low critical thinking skills.  The problem of
attitude is actually not well understood, and the degree of liking the
instructor probably has much less influence on the learning than is usually
assumed.  Indeed the research done at Az State shows that in both chem. and
physics the perceived quality of the instructor was absolutely independent
of gain in conceptual understanding in conventional lecture based courses.

I would cite a recent paper in JRST where they found that student attitudes
towards science were actually fairly disconnected from achievement in middle
school.  In girls there was no connection.  In boys the attitude had little
influence on achievement, but good achievement raised the attitudes.  There
is also the work by Redish where they found that practically all students
suffer a decline in the MPEX attitude survey, except in a very small number
of workshop style courses.

My own experience is that some students who had very negative attitudes and
who disliked me could achieve good gain despite the attitudes.  Indeed the
one case that I am thinking of the mother was in tears because she said I
did not understand her learning disabled daughter.  I pounded the table and
told her about my LD daughter, and that I totally rejected the idea.  The
daughter dropped between semesters, but actually achieved good gain
considering her thinking level.  This particular child is in for a big shock
in college this fall.  I often wonder what happens to the students with the
extremely pushy mothers.  Or more interesting what happens to the mother?

John M. Clement
Houston, TX